I've been doing design for the past 5 years, starting out with ansi/ascii and eventually working myself up to doing layouts for web sites. The reason I call this design is because when it comes to illustration, I have no experience at all drawing anything. I can throw some letters together on a page and usually get whatever end result I want along with some other shapes, but thats about it.

I'm wondering where people would recommend I should start. I think the best place is just basic pencil and paper drawing, but what types of things should I practice drawing, are there any rules of thumb for proportion? I'd take an art class but they're all full where I goto school until next September and 9 months is just too far away.

Do what I did and just copy stuff like photos or adverts, and just keep copying stuff until you learn. Trust me it works, in three years I went from a foo who cant draw anything recognisable to someone who has recieved arts honours at school. It works!

Well what a small, small world. Once upon a time, in a world of ascii and ansi, bbs's and art groups, you made a little local group called AWS <artists with style>. Remember me at all? I probably went by the nick, Fury back then. Co-opped Demonic Portal and Rama. Nice seeing ya around.

If I were you, I'd go out and get the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. Just go to the library or something, it's pretty widely available. You will become enlightened. Once you read that, and have done what the book tells you to do, draw like a mad foo.. draw everything and anything around you. The book can probably explain it better than I can.

You know, I keep seeing that book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", and I always passed it up. I keep hearing great things about it though. Is it really that good of a book? What does it teach in general, I mean, what's the gist of the book or what are some examples of stuff that it goes over?

The book deals more with perception, and teaching you how to see what is there, and not what you think is there. It does quite a few excercizes to to get you to draw what you see, rather than looking at something and drawing what your mind knows it is. It's pretty good, although I never read all of it. Pick it up, its great.

Flinthawk: The book is based on the theory that the left and right side of the brain function independantly, almost as if they are two separate brains. The left side of the brain, the side of the brain that categorizes, and describes things as words, and reads things as symbols is dominant. The right side of the brain, or the visual side, is the creative side, and submissive. This theory is actually sort of dated, but for all purposes, it still applies.

The book primarily teaches you to utilize that side of the brain, making the left side subside into letting the right side do some work. I could go on and on explaining this, but to sum it up, pretty much this book teaches you how to see in a different way. Instead of drawing a mouse, as a symbol that we see it as, the book teaches you to see what curves/lines/shapes make the mouse.

Actually, there seems to be a new version of drawing on the right side of you bran. Called, yup, you guessed it!
"NEW Drawing on the right side of your brain".
ISBN: 0285635816
It was published 00/10, so it should be fairly new. I have yet to find time to buy it tho.

If you're from Sweden you should check out you local "akademibokhandeln"-book shop. (or [url=http://www.akademibokhandeln.se)]www.akademibokhandeln.se)[/url]

Hi ya,
Drawing on the Right side of the brain is good. If you really want to know what drawing is all about, you'll do yourself a favor and pick up...The Natural Way To Draw by Kimon Nicolaides.... This book kicks every other books ass on how to draw...if you are willing to put in the time and effort. It is a great book by a great man, unfortunately he died young...If you like books that tell you put a line here, or put a line there, you'll hate this, but you'll also never be as good as you could have. The Natural Way to draw is for beginners to masters, I suggest you read it, do it, and just draw...BTW drawing from pictures is ok, but dont make a habit of it. Your work will always appear somewhat flat.

Yeah I got both THE NEW Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Nicolaides' "Natural Way to Draw". I am currently finishing Drawing on the Right Side and plan to jump full into the Natural Way to Draw after that, though I already started on it as well. I like both.
Drawing on the Right Side teaches you the basics, and The Natural Way to Draw perfects you.
I always love the sentence "Now draw for three hours according to schedule X B". Which comes about every 2nd page of The Natural Way .